Well, this is a new feature for me. I am planning to do a minimum of one roundup per week, alongside my regular posts. I personally love roundup posts because I am a pattern junkie, and I love getting a good dose of patterns all at once. I thought with Farmer’s Market season kicking into high gear, as well as Garage Sale season, that crochet bags would be a fun way to integrate the craft with our favorite weekend activities!! Some of these are very well-known patterns, and some are from smaller blogs and designers, and one is the Attic24 bag that I just recently completed, which would make not just a great farmer’s market bag, but also big enough to use as an actual grocery bag – it will easily hold a couple cereal boxes or a half gallon of milk and some canned goods. Super versatile!! Anyway, enjoy, and happy marketing!!
1. Market Tote from Darn Good Yarn – I tried to stay away from patterns that require you to go to a site that sells yarn or is a company because I am certainly not an affiliate in any way, but this bag was just way too cute not to link. I love that it’s bulky cotton – it could be made from old tee shirts or bedsheets torn into yarn strips and that would be awesome. I’m all about upcycling!!
2. Flower Burst Tote from Chocolate Mints in a Jar – This one has been on my project list for a while – I haven’t worked it up, but my mom actually started it and scrapped it because she said it was working up on the smaller side and she wanted something larger at the time. I envisioned this as a cute tote for a tablet or a phablet/sunglasses tote, or an e-reader. I have a very specific and popular color scheme in mind for this one (the cotton is actually sitting out on one of my work tables in my craft room, all ready to go!! If I could just clear out the “must-do” projects from my brain and actually get to it!!) so I’m going to keep mum on my other plans for this one because Murphy’s Law would dictate that I share my idea here and next week I will see them everywhere. But trust, I am making this one soon and I will definitely be sharing when it’s underway 🙂
3. Crocheted Swirling Bag from Knitting Daily – This is a new website for me, so I can’t attest to any other content beyond the pattern page for this bag, but it sure is a gorgeous design and a different take on a normal bag worked in the round. The tighter weave would make for a good garage-sale-ing bag because smaller items wouldn’t poke through or fall out.
4. Farmer’s Market Hexagon Bag aka Grand Ole’ Flag Bag from Jessie at Home – So I love Jessie at Home. I’ll be honest here because this is my space and I don’t feel the need to be totally PC all the time: I am not the overly patriotic type. I do not wear flag tee shirts, I don’t have a flag waving on my property, and I don’t tend to gravitate to events where acting like my country is the greatest thing since sliced bread is the popular thing to do. That being said, Jessie comes up with the most awesome, summer-fun, I’ll say it: PATRIOTIC projects that I’ve seen so far and I love them. I have several of her red, white, and blue creations in my pattern folder for someday, and I love each and every one of them. They make me want to fire up the grill, pop open a freezing cold beer, and sit on the back deck under the hot sun and dip my feet in the kiddie pool. In other words, perfect for summer.
5. Small String Bag by Gilly Bettney – This is a Ravelry link. It’s free, so I don’t believe you need a Ravelry account to access the pattern, but I’m not sure on that, and if you are not a Rav member and you click here and it doesn’t let you download the pattern, please let me know in the comments and I will replace it with another pattern. I love this bag because of the pocket!! I don’t come across many market bags with a pocket and I love it because you can slip your sunnies or phone into the pocket and it won’t mingle with your produce or other market goodies. Love it!
6. Attic24 Crochet Bag – This is the one I just made that I was on the fence about whether I would like it or not. I DO like it, for the record! It’s another tightly-woven bag and It’s. So. Big. so it would be ideal for the actual grocery store because it will hold larger mass-market boxed or canned items. I did not add the flower embellishments because I’m a sour-puss and I thought it would be too fussy. Instead, I lengthened the straps and tied knots in the ends, and that’s how I hid my attachment stitches. I will add a pic later to demonstrate, but go ahead and add flowers. Add a MILLION flowers. Go for it. Don’t be cranky like me. Because it’s a cute bag and the buttons are adorable.
7. Inga’s Häkelbeutel by Inga Joana Mertens – this is another free Ravelry pattern. It is available in Dutch and English and the download button will go directly to a PDF, so make sure you choose the English version (or Dutch, if that floats your boat, who am I to judge?) This is a beautiful and fun take on a Granny Square bag that uses color for its detail rather than embellishments or a million and one double crochets in little clusters. In other words, a granny square bag I actually like 😉
8. Starling Bag from FutureGirl – Apparently, FutureGirl is kind of a big deal. I didn’t know this, but this bag is a good example of why. Simple, but charming and omg the possibilities for customization and and embellishment, yarn choice, size, are endless. The pattern is available in four languages, and the only drawback to this one is that you will need to enter an email address to access the pattern. She states that she won’t spam you, and entering the email address assures her that bots won’t overwhelm her bandwidth – as crafters, frugal people, and generally cool homies, we should support this practice because it is beneficial for us and keeps those patterns free! I understand if you don’t like this, sometimes I don’t either (depends on my mood and how caffeinated I am on any given day…) but I’ve created a “throwaway” email address that I use just for stuff like this – an email address that I won’t care too much about if I have to scrap. So I can access content without sacrificing my “main” (hell, or my backup or my backup to my backup…yeh…) email address.
Well, I hope you like this new idea for the blog. I love that you all, my very first readers, are here with me while I learn what works and I find my voice on the internet. If there is something you don’t like (or something you DO!!), please don’t hesitate to let me know. I’m not fooling myself that I am the next Moogly or B.Hooked, but I’d like to find a group of smaller bloggers, a closer-knit fam, where we can share ideas, and I’d love to be one of the people bringing fresh ideas to the table!! So please, feedback away, I promise I won’t get my feelings hurt and you would be helping me in a massive way!!
Also, legal note here. All photos are the property of the pattern holders, bloggers, and Ravelry members from which they came. Please do not use any content from this roundup without sourcing the creators. This hurts the community and makes these creative people less willing to share with us. Please give credit where credit is due, do not mass-produce any content from any of these links, and please include a link back to the pattern page should you make any of these bags to sell. Selling is generally accepted on a grass-roots, local market, or charity level, but please contact pattern authors before doing so to ensure you are not in copyright violation. Thank you!!
Happy Little Houses 